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Friday, April 24, 2009

dye job gone awry

well not really ... I like what I got, but it was exactly what I was hoping for.

they should make some lovely socks -- it will have a wonderful one of a knd pattern to it.

I label these skeins "Close But No Cigar" color ways ... because while the skeins were colored the same way, at the same time, same dye-lots - they marled differently ... but they should make a beautiful effect once knitted up!

Okay so here's what I did .... I did a test swatch and kept careful records of ratios of colors (so I could make the batch bigger), colorant:water ratios, "cooking" times.

This particular dye lot used 11 parts blue to 2 parts purple Paas dye, to 2 cups water for 1/2 oz yarn, cooked for a total of 12 minutes. then cooled to room temp and rinsed then hung to dry.

here is how it was supposed to look:

This is what I got instead:

here is a comparison of what I got ... left to right (brightness is off):

1) the color I wanted (deep navy)2) the rainbow batch used to see who colors would blend3) the color I got (deep navy dyed over just blue)

as you can see -- they are all very nice (and youngest daughter has already claimed the rainbow mini skein for a sock)

as you can see - its considerably brighter than I wanted but it should still give me a good effect even if it isn't the exact one I wanted.

these were pure yellow paas overdyed onto onion skin dyed yarn ... the paas was microwaved and the onion skin was cooked in a crock pot for a whole day (I really needed more onions skins than I had to make it deeper ... but you use what you've got)

As you can see the color runs from a subtle onion to brighter yellow - it should flash wonderfully giving it a metallic look!

I've been told that it could be that the yarn has simply taken all it can of the dye and it can't take anymore ... I don't know .... I haven't heard of such a thing but I suppose its possible.